welcome back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour senator susan collins support of the dodd frank act in two thousand and eight but now she's introduced legislation that would destroy it why are lawmakers in washington trying to block financial regulators from doing their job of policing our out of control finance industry and despite republicans arguing the voter and election fraud are rampant across america it seems like they're the only ones getting caught are those caught is in florida and there is some good some very interesting new developments in this case and for the second day teachers in chicago took to the picket lines to protest the city's treatment of them and in particular of the city's public school

children but this is more than just a strike about workers' rights and better wages it's a few it's a battle for the future of our nation i'll tell you why and i still eat it. in the best the rest of the news lawmakers in washington are trying to prevent the financial regulation of wall street yet again while the finance industry continues to mount legal challenges against the dodd frank law passed in two thousand and eight senators susan collins of maine and rob portman of ohio both republicans have introduced a new bill that would make it even harder for financial regulators to police the big banks it would also give more steam to those who are against financial regulation and other challenges of dodd frank and wall senator portman's as the legislation will quote promote a more stable and regular. environment for economic growth and job creation it's

clear that this legislation does nothing to protect you and me and stead offers up more protection to wall street and senior executives joining me now to discuss more about this latest blow to financial regulation in america is ahmet irag regulatory policy advocate with public citizen welcome to the program thank you tom have to be here thanks for joining us what does this bill do so this bill it will do a couple of things the first thing it will do is that it will definitely impose additional delays for financial agencies trying to get their dodd frank wall street financial reforms out we know that this makes the current situation worse up to two thirds current dodd frank regulations have yet to be put in place this is two and a half years after the lowest part the law was passed and four years after the financial crisis so clearly the solution that we should be looking for is something that expedites speeds up the process and helps these financial agencies get these

and doesn't even go as far as rolling you know going back to glass steagall and doing away with the commodity futures modernization act and having it just be so simple to roll back those two piece of legislation the commodity futures modernization act and been and what was it grimly while it just reversed those that would be a simpler solution potentially a more effective solution that's not what we have in place and at this point we're just struggling to get the basic wall street reforms out of dodd frank in place so this is a crucial situation is there any evidence that what we're seeing here with senators collins and portman is senators who are being bought off by wall street now that the supreme court has made that legal the wall street lobby has had quite a bit of success i think they are the main reason that the wall street reforms are not in place currently and so you can make a case that in fact the wall street lobby is the. one pushing this kind of proposal

they see the payoff in slowing down or entirely blocking the remaining dodd frank frank reforms yet to be in place so there's a big payoff for them isn't it is it is this like just a rush for the money you know let's quick get the money and bail i mean don't they realize that they're playing with fire here with a potential great depression in the united states or does wall street just when a matter you know heads i win tails you lose kind of thing no matter what happens i think wall street thinks they'll win regardless of the situation they have a pretty big president in their back pocket the taxpayer funded bailout so they know that if they get into trouble again they can rely on taxpayers to save save them again so they are just looking at the high potential for short upside gain in the short term they really aren't looking at the the long term when you're looking at a stable regulatory environment i'm very glad that you cited senator portman in

claiming that this bill will create a stable regulatory environment frankly creating a stable stable regulatory environment is only possible if we get the full complement of dodd frank reforms in place which would include things like breaking up the big banks at least getting some basic too big to fail provisions on the books reining in expects of speculation on wall street that is rampant potentially still rampant we know that oil prices are being driven up by speculation on wall street frankly the status quo of self-regulation where wall street polices itself is still in place and this bill does nothing to change that in fact exactly what does this bill do in fact what it does is basically preserve the status quo status quo free full implementation of dodd frank prefer to be freezes us in time like like a fly in amber that's right that's right so financial. crisis pretty full implementation

of dodd frank and so what the bill does is it adds one hundred eighty days to the current process which is a very slow process as i mentioned implementing wall street reform and then what it actually does which is a little bit even more of a dangerous element is it lays the foundation really gives the tools for a future white house that opposed to financial reform at large or particular agencies we know see if he'd be the consumer financial protection bureau is has been a controversial agency since its inception gives the white house the tools to block those agencies regulations block the missions of those if they can get a republican in the white house if they can get a republican in the white house that's that's astounding and where does a bill stand in the senate the bill well certainly going to squash this one we hope one of the differences about this bill one of the reasons that makes it such a dangerous threat is that it is being considered in the senate up to this point all of the extreme radical wall street deregulatory proposals were coming from the

house have been passed in the house and we the american public could rely on the senate as being the voice of reason the backstop to these proposals not taking them out anymore there will be starting with the senate thank you so much for being with us thank you tom keep up the great work thank you thank you. and now on to the ongoing saga of republican election regain authorities in florida are looking for a republican strategist who is believed to have been involved in a campaign to run a fake democrat and a congressional primary in order to help the republican incumbent win the general election last week republican operative and allie grows apartment was raided by police and she was scheduled to speak with prosecutors but she never showed up at her attorneys have no idea where she is it's important to know what the republicans around the nation are focused on voter fraud which virtually never happens and using voter fraud myths to justify kicking millions of democratic voters off the rolls i had november with voter suppression ideologues at the. same time

republicans are simultaneously working hard to commit election fraud which does happen quite often and which may have happened in florida's twenty sixth congressional district and the person who may be at the center of this fraud is a sitting united states congressman david rivera joining us now to tell us the full story of what exactly is going on here is meghan carpentier executive editor off story meghan welcome back thanks for having me so give us a story about what's going on here in miami well. david rivera who won his first congressional election in two thousand and ten has been dogged by allegations of various bad behaviors and on ethical activity pretty much his entire political career including in the last two years the most recent allegation now involving allegro is that she with rivera's help help fund a primary opponent for the democrat who's running who is now running to unseat

rivera in the hopes that either they would have a non democrat on the ticket or that they would be able to cause enough trouble for garcia who's the man who's running to unseat rivera they were flyers from his supposed democratic component talk about his divorce really slamming him and ugly ways that don't necessarily fly with voters in the end when people looked into the allegations you know he the original opponent was a part time hotel employee a political neophyte no one knew where the money was coming from he never brazen the money he loaned he said he loaned himself eleven thousand dollars and then suddenly you know the fires that were being produced were a much higher quality and it was actually upwards of sixty four thousand dollars suddenly he loaned he said he loaned himself sixty four thousand dollars even though he's only been part time employed the printer said that they got paid in cash by a grow the f.b.i. raided her house and then she disappeared first her parents and her lawyers consternation now they said that they know that she's fine even though they

supposedly haven't spoken to her while so it looks like she's on the run you said the f.b.i. raided the house this is the justice department going after this if i am correct and that would mean that the federal prosecutors involved do you think that they're possibly just trying to wait until after november and if that romney gets in office hoping that he'll appoint a different federal prosecutor or pull the case well i don't i mean rivera's ties are within the florida republican party and obviously you know. mitt romney would like to win in florida i think the bigger deal is is that meantime you see sort of on bloops of cash handed over as part of a political campaign the question is where did they come from you know rivera can have taken in legal donations and with all of the reporting part of the f.e.c. then turned them into cash handed them to grow and have handed them to the printer so clearly the prosecutors are concerned about where the money comes from in the first place and how it got to garcia's democratic opponent how it got to grow what

the ties are to rivera where the money's come from i mean if they're investigating what it would normally just be sort of a donation fraud issue that's the f.e.c. and that normally gets investigated after an election so the fact that they're coming in you know in august september you know months before rivera is up for reelection that actually indicates to me that that the allegations that they're looking into are much more serious than just simple you know donation fraud which is normally something the f.e.c. investigates after the fact so this is even even bigger than the for example the richard nixon taking cash money i think was one hundred thousand dollars in the milk lobby or five hundred thousand dollars from jimmy hoffa this is maybe that kind of thing and then that money being used to to to rig the primary on the other side i mean not just rig the primary but paying this man in cash i mean why you know the questions then are why did he get in the race why. does he have these powerful republican backers that are that are funding his campaign with cash you.

and where is that and where is that cash coming from it's not even sort of legal donations or super pac or any one of a number of legal ways that they could have accomplished this and you can see in other races like in wisconsin running people running fake democrats and backing these campaigns it's not an unusual thing the unusual thing comes when you get into the cash donations and the sources of that and that sort of thing lends itself to criminal investigations not just election and that is sort of the cover up is worse than the crime meghan thanks so much for being with us tonight thanks for having me . after the break teachers in chicago were on strike again today marking the second day that three hundred fifty thousand students were locked out of a classroom if you believe in protecting the commons in this country and what a brighter future for america and should probably be throwing your support behind these teachers i'll tell you why in tonight's deleted.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom hardy welcome to the big

picture. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that you may call. the far left doesn't want the usa to defeat terrorism. here's. the. deal and a. whole lot. of really sort of. you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because there are profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage because that breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break this that.

i will go back so last august the s. and p. credit rating agency downgraded our nation's debt was referred to as the tea party downgrade because house republicans refused to come up with a deal until the midnight hour to raise the nation's debt limit and thus prevent the united states from defaulting on its debts all around the world the downgrade occurred just after speaker of the house john boehner bragged the republicans got ninety eight percent of what they wanted in the debt limit deal republican party was clearly responsible for the downgrade in fact in the report explaining why they downgraded our debt standard poor's said that one reason was because the majority of republicans in congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues a position we believe congress reinforced by passing the act. so that downgrade of

america happened because republicans would raise taxes and it might happen again soon this time by moody's credit rating agency today moody's issued a warning to the united states that a debt downgrade could be on the horizon if congress doesn't address the coming fiscal cliff and doesn't put into place policies to cut our federal debt the statement reads if those negotiations lead to specific policies that produce a stabilization and then downward trend in the ratio of federal debt to g.d.p. over the medium term the rating will likely be affirmed and the outlook returned to stable if those negotiations if those negotiations fail to produce such policies however moody's would expect to lower the rating probably they want now there are two ways to reduce the debt cut spending raise taxes democrats have shown a willingness to do both actually to cut spending even cut spending to entitlement programs like social security medicare just so long as those spending cuts are

accompanied by revenue raisers like tax hikes on the rich or closing tax loopholes for corporations republicans on the other hand won't budge they will only agree to cutting spending in particular spending on social welfare programs that help working people and the poor they especially won't touch where we're really spending the most money and that's in the defense department whose budget has tripled since one thousand nine hundred eight the american people want a balanced plan for debt reduction they want everyone to make sacrifices rich and poor republicans are willing to let the rich sacrifice one penny for deficit reduction not one single penny every public and continue to take this hardline stance opposing any and all tax increases on the top one percent and transnational corporations in the united states will once again have its credit downgraded like a deadbeat nation keep an eye on this we could be headed for tea party downgrade part too. just.

the good the bad and the very would deny asli ugly the good of the entertainment industry hollywood while those watching continue to bicker over things like marriage equality in the role of the wealthy elite in america it seems that the entertainment industry is ready to embrace what lawmakers in washington won't this year's fall lineup of new t.v. shows includes the likes of n.b.c.'s the new normal features a gay couple using a surrogate mother to have a baby and on a.b.c. there's six six six park a show about wealthy apartment building owners in manhattan and how they're taking over the lives of in some cases stealing from the middle class tenants in their buildings the fact that these issues are now becoming a mainstream topic of television shows says something about our culture we've accepted them as the new norms and so should our politicians in washington. the bad

dick cheney in an interview last night with the conservative daily caller cheney accused president obama of taking sole credit for the raid that killed osama bin laden last year he also accused president obama of failing to attend his daily intelligence briefings cheney was just echoing the sentiments of a birth or leg group of ex-military personnel who have run ads arguing that president obama has been overstating his role and been logs death however president obama has repeatedly expressed gratitude for all of those involved in bringing even law to justice even thanking the bush administration and calling president bush and thanking him personally but we have here is the far right spreading yet another a lie about president obama cursed well that's the only way they can win in november. and the very very ugly sheriff larry campbell campbell is the sheriff of leon county florida is currently up for reelection this year he also has quite the temper and streak of abusing his power including getting in

a bar fight and having the many thought with a rested and then punching the guy in the face but it doesn't stop there for mr campbell he recently said to a leon county resident that if his opponents have a problem with him and how he conducts himself the sheriff they should quote go down and let me show you and see if i can do it any good and quick so we have a law enforcement official in a position of power threatening to shoot those who disagree with him that is very fair. we're now in day two of the chicago teachers union strike and the right wing messaging on this one is clear they're saying by going on strike teachers don't

give a damn about students in chicago and that was the message coming from the mitt romney campaign as relayed by sean hannity and g.o.p. t.v. take a look. governor mitt romney released a statement expressing his disappointment for those walk out of reach president obama has chosen his side in this fight sending his vice president last year to assure the nation's largest teachers' union that you should have no doubt about my affection for you and the president's commitment to you i choose to side with the parents and students depending on public schools to give them the skills to succeed in my plan for education reform will do exactly that and sadly a lot of democrats spearheaded by chicago mayor rahm emanuel have taken pretty much that position and what it shows is that those who are opposed to the strike don't have the faintest clue about why this strike is really happening sure teachers are upset with cuts to their pay and benefits as they should be and one of the problems

is labor law in illinois requires them to claim a financial reason to go on strike and so that that has to be the reason that they state but the real reason why the strike is going on is because teachers are more concerned with the state of chicago's public schools which have seen their funding slashed and the way this is harming their students and ultimately teachers are more concerned with how chicago is going to educate its young citizens in the future this is a crucial issue like a lot of other urban public school systems across america chicago's public school system is a nightmare you'd think there'd be one school nurse per school not chicago public school system only has two hundred two nurses serve six hundred eighty four schools there are currently only three hundred seventy social workers employed in chicago public schools despite get this over fifteen thousand five hundred eighty homeless students attending public schools in the district. there's

a shortage of school counselors as well only seven hundred thirty one counselors employed that's less than half the sixteen hundred counselors recommended by the american school counselors association on top of all that only a quarter of chicago's own entry schools have full time art or music instructors and a third of all a third of all chicago's public schools don't even have libraries now conservatives and proponents of for profit education will point to these numbers and say see i told you public education is a bad idea let's give the corporations a shot of educating our kids what they know and what they don't want you to know is our public schools are failing precisely because of this move toward corporate education in chicago massive cuts to public education have been proposed why

to pay for hundreds of brand spanking new for profit charter schools it's the same situation in several other states where critical taxpayer dollars are being diverted away from public education and toward for profit education as the chart shows twenty six states around the nation are planning to spend a lot less money on students come two thousand and thirteen illinois plans to spend one hundred dollars fewer per student and means fewer teachers bigger classrooms outdated computers no libraries shorten teacher prep time and ultimately poor education results curiously this is the same strategy republicans have used against our federal government they call it starve the beast cut funding to the government render the government incapable of providing services that should like caring for people in new orleans during a hurricane and then argue that that government is incompetent and we should

therefore give corporations a shot it protecting health care for the poor retirement accounts for seniors. in chicago this starving of public education has dragged schools teachers and students to a breaking point and that's why the teachers are in the streets so of all the players in this dispute the teachers are the only ones actually looking out for the best interest of the students tainio the only ones left who can highlight the dire situation the public education is in here in the united states of america public education has a long and fruitful history in our nation its biggest proponent thomas jefferson who wrote the difficult ration of independence established the university of virginia for the sole purpose of giving the common man access to a good education it was free he was so proud of his accomplishment he made sure his tombstone said father of the university of virginia and it didn't even mention he

was the third present a united states for two terms as jefferson said in eight hundred eighteen now let us see what the schools the president primary schools cost us on the supposition that all of the children of ten eleven and twelve years old are as they ought to be at school and if they are not so much the the work is the system for they will be untaught and their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us more dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education but the work that jefferson did at the opening onset of america the opening years of this country and the work advocates of public education have done for the next two hundred years that's now hanging in the balance and chicago today is the epicenter of the struggle if you believe that educating our kids should be handed off to for profit corporations who look at

pupils as numbers on a balance sheet rather than potential scientists and doctors and presidents than yeah the strike is a pain in the butt to you but if you believe like thomas jefferson did. that educating our kids should be part of the commons something we all do together just as it has been since the founding of this country then you should be standing with chicago's teachers today this is not about selling it's not about benefits this is about students and the future of america and a lot is at stake and that's the way it is tonight tuesdays twenty twelve if you missed anything i'm sure you can all watch it in h.d. on hulu at hulu dot com slash the big picture for more information on any of the stories we covered visit our website at tom hartman dot com free speech dot org and also check out our two you tube channels there are links to tom hartman dot com also tom hartman dot com check out all the different ways you can send us your feedback and don't forget to mark receive begins when you get out there get active

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